New Patients

I regret that because of family commitments, I am no longer able to see new patients, now or in the foreseeable future.

However, I do plan to continue writing more of the educational articles that are posted on my website at AlanSpanosMD.com. Some of these are for patients, and some for their doctors. Most people who have hypermobility-related conditions will get much better medical care if they, and their doctors, get familiar with articles such as these. This is a medical areas where patients themselves need to get well informed, so they can guide their doctors to learn enough about their condition to help them. Most of the principles and tactics for treating hypermobility conditions are familiar to doctors in relation to other illnesses. They don’t need to learn a lot of new stuff. They just need to apply what they already know, with a bit of direction on how to best focus on the medical problems of people with EDS and related conditions.

So I strongly recommend that you download the relevant articles, and see if you can interest your local doctor, or doctors, in following the guidelines they contain on diagnosis, and treatment. The articles for family doctors and internists are Joint Hypermobility Diagnosis for Non-Specialists, and Medical Care of Patients with a Hypermobility Disorder.

I also recommend that you read I Think I May Have EDS, even if you know your diagnosis already, because it contains suggestions on how you can try to interest your doctor in learning about your condition, and about you: this will be crucial for your long-term medical care. The titles of the other articles are self-explanatory. I suggest you get familiar with the ones that are relevant for you and consider pursuing the suggestions in them.

Note that you do not need to wait for an “official” diagnosis from a geneticist or some other specialist, in order to have good medical treatment. A “presumptive” or “working” diagnosis made by your primary care doctor is quite enough to guide your treatment, while awaiting confirmation by a specialist. Or the doctor can make a general diagnosis like “Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (HSD)” of which there are several types, but leave it to a geneticist to specify which type you have. Again, the general diagnosis is quite enough to get the patient’s treatment going better, and in many cases, seeing the geneticist won’t add anything to the treatment plan.

I will be adding new articles on different problems encountered by people with hypermobility conditions, some aimed also at doctors in various different specialties. Their titles will be self-explanatory.

Whether or not you can interest your local doctor in learning about your condition, you yourself should learn as much as you can about it. Other than the articles on this website, useful websites are those of the Ehlers Danlos Society at ehlers-danlos.com, and also EDSawareness.com, and patient support groups at inspire.com and elsewhere. These websites are also your best resource for finding doctors who have experience with EDS.

Alan Spanos MD, MA

My office is on the east side of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, close to Raleigh, Durham, Cary, Hillsborough, and Carrboro, North Carolina.